Know who YOU are, what YOU want, HOW to get it

Know who YOU are, what YOU want, HOW to get it

Client Success

Client Experiences

Guiding people through my programme gives me an insight into a wealth of living issues and I have witnessed some amazing changes as a result. Let some of my clients tell you about their successes:

Personal Identity programme – Jo Clarke:

“I just wanted to tell you that I decided to look back over all the great work you did with me. I sat for a couple of hours reading through all my stuff. So so interesting and so so true still. Because of you and your fantastic help some of my dreams have been fulfilled!!+! We have a beautiful home which we had built. We have our veg patches a lot of them we grow all our flowers and everything we grow from seed. We live in the country but near enough to a town. We are 20 mins from a beach. I have my own Pilates studio above our garage which is 3yrs old and thriving. The boys are so content and happy. I am so proud of them. I still go into overwhelm and worry but have the tools to cope with them. Reading over my stuff has really helped me and to see what we have achieved is just fab. Ironic thing is we have all these dreams that are real now and on half the money that we used to earn. It has made me realise that with your work I have found the meaning of being happy and you will be pleased to know that I don’t stress as much about having money!!!!! We have our health food on the table but most of all each other. It has been an up and down journey and I am still on that journey but we are all in a better place especially me. So thank you so so much for being such a great teacher.”

I have also included several case studies so that you can choose the case study relevant to your circumstances (I operate with integrity and confidentiality, therefore client names have been changed to protect their anonymity)

Clarissa – Woman

Werner – Man.

Michelle – Continuous Expat

Alexis – Teenager

Gavin & Beth – Couple A

Spence – Gay Man

Hilde and Gerrit – Couple B

Alain & Raph – Father and Teenage Son

1. Clarissa from Paris was a vibrant young woman with a real energy for life and an obvious ambition to achieve, and achieve big. She was happily married to a ‘C’-level executive in a global organisation. Their three children were in boarding school in the UK.

She told me about her ambitious goal to open a chain of fitness centres across France. Clarissa wanted me to help her identify her strengths, weakness and the risks involved to see if she could really be happy as a fitness entrepreneur. She was keen to be thoroughly prepared for the future with no unexpected obstacles.

In working through the programme together we both hit upon a major surprise. The process of the programme is to find your true goal and passion and Clarissa found hers – to be a full time mother.

She wanted to totally immerse herself into that role, but felt that it was in total conflict with the life she was living being married to a highly successful businessman and managing the home and entertaining which she felt was expected from the wife of an executive.

We had identified who Clarissa was, and what she wanted from life. The next challenge was to implement it. Negotiation and communication was key. The children were taken out of boarding school and moved to an International school in France. And Clarissa is now the mother she wants to be with support from her husband.

2. Werner from Berlin was a business owner who had created a very successful business. He was widowed three years ago. He had continued with his work but had lost his drive to succeed. He had been married for a long time and felt completely unable to form intimate relationships with women.

He felt he had lost his passion for his business and wanted to explore whether he could get the passion back or do something different. He also wanted to be able to form relationships with women, both as friends and ultimately a soul mate. He felt stuck and wanted to move forward.

The challenge for us both was to mirror Werner’s confidence as a businessman in his personal life, especially in relationships with women. Communication was the key. First he developed a social circle and social skills. Then learnt how to differentiate between friendship and intimacy signals.

By working through the programme Werner rediscovered his passion for his business and realised he didn’t have to consider an alternative. He has a renewed sense of purpose in his life. He has an active social calendar with the result that he has a lot more fun. Finally, he has developed the ability to give clear messages to women around intimacy and friendship, to judge when a relationship is good for him, and to extricate himself from one that isn’t in the right way.

3. Michelle’s homeland is England. Her husband is a Diplomat and Michelle has lived in several countries to date. She came to the progamme because she was so tired of “having to reinvent myself every time I move country”.

As a result of the programme Michelle realised that reinvention was not necessary. Michelle is enough as she is now!

She learnt that she had to understand what she needed from her life in terms of self-awareness, purpose, a sense of belonging, and quality relationships.

She is now confident that in whatever country she finds herself she can continue to achieve this. She knows how not to become isolated in a foreign country, she can confidently assure her husband that he doesn’t need to worry about her, and she can cope with adapting to a new way of living because she understands what actions she needs to take to become an active member of her new community.

4. Alexis from London, was a nervous teenager with an extremely low self-esteem, completely lacking in confidence.

She privately dreamed to be a world-renowned Michelin starred chef, an ambition that was in stark contrast to her parent’s wishes. They expected her, like her siblings had, to follow in their footsteps and become a doctor. Alexis felt that she didn’t have the strength to convince her parents otherwise. She suffered from frequent panic attacks that were affecting her exam results and felt such an academic failure that she considered taking her own life.

Despite being in complete overwhelm, Alexis knew that her passion was to be a chef; she also knew that the solution would be to win over her parents but feared it was impossible.

Working together, Alexis began to identify and build on her strengths. She became aware that she needed to present a convincing proposal to her parents. She developed a plan to reinforce her qualities as a chef by entering (and winning) various junior chef competitions. As a result she developed and maintained excellent relationships with professional chefs.

As a result of working through the programme, Alexis knew that she was passionate about food; she knew she wanted to be a chef and she knew how to achieve that including the exam results required. She demonstrated all that in the proposal that she confidently presented to her parents. They were impressed and convinced.

Alexis successfully completed her exams and is now working as an apprentice for a world-renowned Michelin starred chef. No longer feeling a failure and passionate about success, she is busy developing a plan to open her own Michelin starred restaurant.

5. Gavin and Beth a married couple from Leuven were both at a crossroads in their lives, Gavin in his career, and Beth who wanted to return to work but was unsure whether to continue with her previous career or change it. They were also suffering relationship issues and considering counselling.

They were initially attracted to the couple’s programme, which consists of a mix of joint and independent sessions. From the get go it became obvious that communication was a major issue. However, the programme accommodates this issue and they were keen to address it.

Both of them independently became aware of what they wanted from life. Beth realised that she had put her passion for journalism on hold whilst caring for her children, and that she wanted to take this further and become a travel writer. Gavin realised that he had to change his career to a field that he was more passionate about.

Through the programme they discovered that their needs for their respective futures were incompatible. That, with their massive inability to communicate culminated in a decision to separate before they had each completed the programme. Their separation was amicable because as a result of working the programme together they understood the issues with their relationship and appreciated that their solution to end their marriage was the right one.

The biggest challenge for me was to take each of them through the remainder of the programme in order to achieve their separate goals whilst they were going through the separation process (A great example of the need for a confidentiality agreement).

They are now on friendly terms and have continued to achieve their own goals.

6. Spence came to me through his sister who was also a client. He was unhappy in his career and didn’t know whether to confront this issues facing him at work or consider a new career.

Although he was gay, his work related issues had nothing to do with his sexuality. However, working through the programme both he and I encountered an issue that completely changed his attitude towards himself. Spence believed that gay was who he was. Through the programme he realised that being gay was a facet of his life but it didn’t define who he was. It was an emotional experience for him and quite a shock.

Through this confrontation Spence’s confidence grew dramatically and as a result he was able to manage his work issues and also took his time to explore other options. He was promoted at work, which he states is a result of going through the process of exploring his identity and becoming more self-confident.

He now knows exactly who he is, is confident about his identity and his future and is currently implementing it by taking a masters degree. He found that personal identity coaching far exceeded his expectations. As well as clarifying what he wanted from the future, it gave him a greater knowledge and acceptance of himself and his place within his community, an unexpected bonus.

7. Hilde and Gerrit from Brussels decided to take the couple’s programme because they wanted to explore future options without being paralysed by their crippling financial insecurity issues. Their relationship was suffering as a result.

Whilst working though the programme they identified that their communication was appalling and that they actually didn’t listen to each other. They also realised that their financial insecurity was exacerbated by their lack of communication.

By identifying their life goals and sharing them, they gained a greater self-awareness and understanding of each other, and found it fun. Their communication improved enormously. Their goals although different, through negotiation were manageable. Through the programme they were able to clearly identify their current financial situation and became confident about planning their financial future.

They walked away from the process like a newly married couple, already implementing changes for their respective futures and confidence in their ability to manage their finances.

8. Alain & Raph: Alain came to see me about his relationship with his teenage son Raph. He was at a complete loss about how to communicate with his son. His current relationship with Raph was almost nonexistent because they were in constant conflict. Their poor relationship was also affecting Alain’s marriage. The home had become a battleground and Raph’s mother torn between her husband and her son.

I suggested the Parent and Teen programme as a solution. Alain was surprised as he thought that the solution would be for me to coach his son.

We both negotiated hard with Raph and succeeded in an agreement from them both to commit to the programme. Raph was surprised that his Dad was prepared to put in the effort and admit it was a two-way responsibility, plus he wanted to reduce his Mum’s stress.

It was a fascinating process where Alain realised that he was the main cause of the problem. His senior position within the forces had coloured the way he dealt with his son. He had to stop treating Raph as a recruit, and Raph was able to explain to his father why he didn’t want to follow in his footsteps in terms of a career.

The result? A win-win. Alain became a more effective communicator with his son as a result, and was able to communicate more effectively at work. Raph reconnected with his dad and feels that now they are united rather than at war. He is more confident and clearer about what he wants to achieve in life

By the end of the programme they both learned a lot about themselves and each other. The additional benefits? A happy, conflict free home (well almost!) and a much happier mum.

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Belief:

"Everyone deserves the right to have a voice, to be heard by others and themselves."